


Innervate

by VelkynKarma



Series: Parallel by Proxy [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Horror Elements, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Kuron (Voltron)-centric, PTSD, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, having control taken away?, not really mind control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-19 21:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14245971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelkynKarma/pseuds/VelkynKarma
Summary: The Galra have attacked Olkarion, and it's all hands on deck. But their method of attack is unusual, and Ryou is highly susceptible to it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For PlatonicVLD Week, Spring Edition! Day seven prompt, "Bloom!"
> 
> This one gets a little dark and creepy. After watching S5's "Postmortem," I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if that Olkari virus got a hold of Ryou's Olkari arm. _Parallel by Proxy_ doesn't follow canon S5 events, but this was too good to pass up working in, anyway. :)

The Castle of Lions is stationed at Olkarion when the attack comes.  
  
There’s no warning for it, and no one had been prepared. No intelligence passed along from the Galra finder network, the rebels, or the Blade of Marmora suggested it was even remotely a possibility. No one had even been in combat gear.   
  
But Ryou _is_ on the bridge when Ryner’s call for help arrives.   
  
He’d been using the main computers with Coran, to run over the details for the latest planet thinking about joining the Coalition. The Hatroxi had recently been liberated by the rebel forces, and wanted the safety of numbers after their long occupation by the Galra. They were cautious, but Matt was already on the planet and working with them to open doors for the Coalition to get in and finalize things. Matt was officially the liaison between the rebels and Voltron, and once he’d smoothed things up enough to get the Coalition in, it would be Ryou’s job to represent the Coalition and finalize the Hatroxi joining them. Matt had even promised that he was definitely, absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure the Hatroxi _weren’t_ a race of lunatics out for Champion, which was a plus.   
  
So Ryou’s reviewing the details and talking points before he leaves—he’ll be taking a pod and a wormhole tonight, to take care of that—when he feels and hears a distant rumble, and Ryner’s call arrives.   
  
Ryou isn’t the only one there to hear it. Coran’s on deck reviewing the data as well, and Shiro’s settled in his black paladin’s chair, running through maps and tactics for an upcoming mission. But all of them freeze when Ryner’s face appears in a new holographic display above them. She looks frantic, and when she speaks, Ryou has no problem understanding why.  
  
 _“A meteor-like object struck the forest outside the city,”_ she explains. _“We’re detecting high levels of an unknown toxin emanating from the impact sight.”_   
  
Shiro frowns, standing up from his seat. “I’ll take a look.”  
  
“Take me with you,” Ryou says. A quick swipe through the air saves his research and stores it away for later.  
  
Shiro looks over his shoulder. “In the Black Lion? Why?”  
  
“Not the whole way,” Ryou clarifies. “Drop me off halfway, in the city. Whether it’s an attack or some kind of other disaster, we need to start mobilizing the Olkari. Besides, you could use the ground support—no one else is at their Lions.”   
  
“Might be nothing,” Shiro says, although he doesn’t look like he believes it.  
  
“Maybe, but better safe than sorry,” Ryou says. “This is the hub of the Coalition. Something like this out of nowhere? Not a coincidence.”   
  
Shiro doesn’t look happy about it, but Ryou can see he’s come to the same conclusion. “Fine. Suit up, and I’ll drop you at the square. Coran, see if you can get the others on standby. We might need the Lions soon.”  
  
“Right away,” Coran agrees, already at the controls.  
  
They move quickly after that. Both are suited up and in the Black Lion’s hangar in doboshes. Once in the air, the Black Lion’s displays show an eerie purple haze spreading from the deep center of the forest in the distance, like a sickly sort of fog. Ryou has a feeling it’s anything but safe.   
  
“Be careful,” he warns Shiro, as the Black Lion swoops over the city.   
  
“You too,” Shiro warns him right back. “It’ll be more dangerous on the ground, if something’s going on. Don’t do anything stupid.”   
  
“Me? Never,” Ryou says.   
  
Shiro doesn’t even really stop for him—both of them realize time is of the essence, and Ryou in particular has a bad feeling about that haze spreading in the forest. But Shiro does pilot the Black Lion to swoop low over the city as he passes it, and cracks open the Lion’s belly hatch. Ryou leaps out and fires his jetpack, and sinks safely down into the city square as the Black Lion roars past overhead.   
  
It’s quite an impressive entrance, even if that wasn’t really the intention. The Olkari citizens, and many refugees of all sorts of other races, are nervous and agitated by the recent explosion and the mist creeping steadily closer. But they stare at Ryou in surprise as he lands atop a blocky monument in the middle of the square.   
  
He turns it to his advantage. If he has their attention, he’s going to use it. “Everyone!” he yells, standing upright and adopting his—or really, Shiro’s—‘inspirational leadership’ voice. He turns in a circle on the monument, careful to cast his gaze around at everyone around him, to draw their attention as much as possible. They listen, wide-eyed and staring, some murmuring about paladins of Voltron.  
  
“There is no need to panic over that meteor strike,” Ryou says, as loudly as possible. “But we need to act now to be sure everyone is safe. If you have no combat experience, head for the shelters or your homes in the southern half of the city until a public announcement is made. Lend refugees your homes if they are too far from the designated shelters. Combatants, if you can fight, get ready, and start gathering here at the square. Spread the word—look out for others. We are _not_ letting the Galra take our home back after everything we’ve done to regain it!”   
  
Those gathered in the square look uneasy at first, but as Ryou continues to speak calmly and confidently, they, too, seem to gather their strength. When he reaches the end of his impromptu orders and inspirational speech, many of them cheer. A significant portion of the group scurries off through the streets to spread the word, while others take refugees by the hand to guide them, or call loudly to offer their homes as shelters. Others start to gather in a group below the monument Ryou stands on, a mix of Olkari and refugee races.   
  
Ryou leaps down to this group, kicking his jetpack on just enough to slow his fall. One of the Olkari immediately comes forward. “Sir—Paladin Ryou, right?”  
  
“Yes,” Ryou acknowledges. There’s a small burst of warm pride in his heart at the title, but he smothers it for the moment. He has a job to do.   
  
But it is nice to be recognized—and it’s no surprise that they do recognize him as _him_ , and not Shiro. Ryou is something of a regular on Olkari now, between Voltron’s frequent visits and his own prosthetic maintenance. He’s honestly started to think of Olkari as a second home after the Castle, more so than even Earth. And between that, his arm, and his chosen paladin color—a pale, Olkari green—it’s no wonder the Olkari recognize and trust him.   
  
“What are your orders, sir?” The Olkari asks.   
  
“If you can, start making weaponry for the others,” Ryou decides. As an afterthought, remembering the strange purple haze, he adds, “Some kind of air purifiers or gas masks, too, if it can be done. The danger is coming from the forest—we need to start evacuating people off the streets from that direction. I want a blockade set up for defense. And start readying defense systems to provide Voltron with support.” Whatever this attack is, Ryou is sure it’s only the first stage. Any Galra officer ballsy enough to strike at the heart of the Coalition won’t leave it at that; they’ll want to gloat, just to prove their superior strength.   
  
The Olkari nods, and several of the other gathered combatants leap into action as per his orders. A few of the more skilled Olkari begin tearing up the metal ground and reshaping it to form firearms and blades, which they distribute to the rest of the gathered fighters. A few faster runners go ahead to start spreading the word on the evacuations, and still others begin setting up barricades in the streets to prepare for whatever might come their way.   
  
Ryou supervises. He may not lead Voltron anymore, but he still knows how to lead, and organize a battle. It comes in handy when he plays mission control for Voltron in big space battles, but it’s just as useful here, where these people trust him enough to let him take control.   
  
It lets him take some weight off of Shiro’s shoulders, at least. And speaking of…”We’re mobilizing here. How’s it looking?” he asks over the communicators. If he squints, he can just barely see the black speck that is the Black Lion in the distance, skimming over the forest.   
  
“We have a big problem here,” Shiro answers. “Coran, I need the other Lions. _Now.”_   
  
There’s a pained grunt on the other end of the line and the sharp click of the Lion’s controls, and Ryou can just barely make out the way the Black Lion’s speck in the distance suddenly rockets up. There’s a flash of purple, and then another, and Ryou has a terrible feeling that something is attacking. “Keith in the Red Lion,” Shiro adds a moment later. “We’re going to need the sword.”  
  
“I’m on it!” Coran says. “The team is already standing by. Just hold out until they get there.”   
  
“What’s attacking?” Ryou asks.   
  
“Some kind of giant monster,” Shiro says. “I’ll keep it busy, but—this fog is doing something to the forest. It’s alive, and it’s almost reached the city. You need to look out on the ground. I’m not sure what it’ll do when it gets to the streets.”  
  
“We’re already getting people off of them,” Ryou says, forcing confidence into his voice. “You focus on the big monster. We’ll take care of the city.”  
  
“Be careful,” Shiro repeats.   
  
“Same to you,” Ryou shoots back.   
  
Then he disengages from the comms to turn back to his own force of volunteer fighters. “The attack is coming from the forest itself. Whatever the Galra did is making it come alive and act aggressively. I want Olkari skilled with plant manipulation closer to the front, and each one should be paired with a defender to keep them safe while they work. Our goal is to neutralize the attack quickly, before major damage or casualties. Now let’s move!”   
  
Most of the fighters don’t seem to be part of any standing military, but they work well when given proper direction. Olkari with the ability to manipulate plants identify themselves quickly, and other Olkari or refugees pair up with their new partners to act as shields. Ryou leads the charge out of the square and towards the attack, directing where needed.  
  
They’re just barely in time. The purple haze reaches the edge of the city just as they do, and with it comes the forest. It’s alive, now, but not in any recognizable form. The trees and plants are warped and ugly-looking now, with bark snapped and broken everywhere. Its wood and leaves wrench unnaturally out of alignment into a clumped, pulpy mess of natural resources. They form twisted vines and tentacles, but most of the surface of those things are blackened and dead-looking. Veins of glowing Galra purple run through the snapped bark and oozing, sickly wood pulp. The entire swarming forest smells like a rotting, dead swamp, and not the fresh, sweet scents the Olkari forest had once had.   
  
Ryou has never been so disgusted with Galra warfare. The Galra can’t seem to touch something without finding some way to corrupt it to their own vile purposes. This forest had been full of life and strength not even a varga ago. Now it’s a sick mess of broken, dying trees and plants, hideously misshapen and twisted for a purpose not their own.   
  
Ryou won’t stand for it. Shiro and the others will take down the source of the mess, but Ryou refuses to let it get far in the city. “Stop those vines!” he shouts to the rest of his fighters. “Protect the vine-speakers until they can neutralize this attack! _Go!”_   
  
It’s a good plan, and the fighters rush forward to engage. The twisted vines are already beginning to swarm over buildings and slither their way along the streets, but Ryou’s team strikes hard and fast at the largest ones, hoping to slow down the worst of the attack. Several of the manipulator Olkari manage to press their hand against the vines, closing their eyes to concentrate while their partners fend off tentacles and creeping vines. Ryou helps wherever he can, using his Olkari arm to blast particularly malicious vines away from his men, and call orders where he can.   
  
It’s a good plan, but then things go wrong. One of the vine-speakers opens his eyes wide, and yells, “It’s not listening! I can’t communicate with the nano-cellulose! We can’t interface—“  
  
He isn’t able to finish. With a horrified shriek, his protector, an ambitious unilu, is snatched up by another vine and dragged off into the depths of the rotting black and purple forest. Ryou tries to take a shot to protect the defenseless Olkari, but he’s too late, and the very vine he’d been trying to interface with curls around him and crushes until he goes limp.   
  
“No!” Ryou yells.   
  
The rest of his team is being overwhelmed too, now. Many of the vine-speakers and their guardians are being wrapped up, smothered or crushed, or dragged away into the choking mass of vines. More of the vines grow over and around buildings, digging into metal, shattering glowing lights and computer banks, and choking the life out of major city systems. The vines are growing in size, as well, and wherever they establish a strong presence they begin twisting and knotting around themselves, forming thick walls of plant matter—like they’re trying to shape into something else.  
  
“They’re _consuming,”_ one of the surviving vine-speakers says, eyes wide. “It’s like the forest is feeding! And _growing!”_   
  
“Fall back!” Ryou shouts to his remaining followers. “Fall back to the square! There’s no way to neutralize these. We need to fall back and create better defenses before these things can swarm to the parts of the city that haven’t been evacuated.”  
  
The remaining fighters take his lead, relieved. They back down the square, fighting off smaller vines and doing their best to look out for their remaining team members. When Ryou has a second to take an approximate head count, he realizes with disgust he’s already lost at least eight people.   
  
He does everything he can to make sure that casualty list doesn’t grow even higher, making every shot from his Olkari arm count, and by being the very last person in the retreat, taking it upon himself to guard their backs. These people had trusted him with their lives. He won’t let that trust be in vain.   
  
But even as he fights, he brings up his communications again. “We have problems,” he says, direct and to the point. “Whatever this stuff is, it resists Olkari manipulation. They can’t control these vines, and they’re tearing the city apart. One of them thinks the vines are feeding on something here to get stronger. We need Voltron here.”  
  
“We’re a little busy,” Shiro answers. His communications sound a bit staticky, but Ryou can still make out a grunt of pain on his end, and then a sharp, “Hunk, watch your back!”   
  
Hunk yelps on the line. A moment later, he gasps, “Too close! Thanks, Keith.”  
  
“You got it.”  
  
“Voltron can’t make it to you yet,” Shiro says. “We haven’t even been able to form. It’s all we can do to keep this monster at bay. You’ll have to find a way to hold out a little longer.”   
  
“I can go to ground to help,” Lance says. His comm sounds a little clearer, but not by much. “I’m not in a Lion. Maybe I can do something if one of the Olkari can make me a gun.”  
  
“Do it,” Shiro agrees.   
  
“I’ve got a readout on this purple stuff,” Pidge adds. “It looks like some sort of invasive plasma. I’m sending the data to Coran now. See if you can get Matt on call to analyze it, he’s good with this stuff.”  
  
“I’ll try to hail him,” Coran agrees. “Hopefully I can get through to him on Hatroxi.”  
  
“We’ll do what we can to stall until then,” Ryou says. They’re sorely outclassed here, and there’s no way to combat these vines, but at least they can try to protect the civilians and form some kind of defense. At least until Matt can analyze the data and maybe find a way to reverse whatever this mist is doing.   
  
“Good,” Shiro says. “Team—now, while it’s charging. Form Voltron!”   
  
Ryou disengages from the group communications again to let them concentrate. It sounds like it’s taking all of Shiro’s focus to take on whatever monster is out there, and his mind can’t be on two problems at once. The faster he can target that monster, the faster Voltron can come to assist. Ryou will handle the city as well as he can until that happens.   
  
He retreats back to the city square with his team. Already, the vines are growing further, and the first tendrils are starting to creep their way over and around the buildings. The barricades constructed earlier are useless; they had been designed with attacking forces in mind, not the forest itself. The twisted forest grows over them with ease, unhindered for more than a few seconds.   
  
Ryou curses, but rearranges his orders yet again. “Focus on evacuation!” he orders his followers. “Get citizens out of here before those vines get closer. Coran—get the Castle’s particle barrier up now, before the forest gets that far.”   
  
“Right away,” Coran acknowledges.   
  
“I’m o- — ground,” Lance says. His voice breaks with static, but Ryou can still mostly make out his words. “Do you — — join you?”  
  
“No,” Ryou decides. Shiro’s too busy to make the call, but Ryou can handle the ground efforts easily enough, and Lance seems willing to follow his orders. “Focus on funneling people through to the Castle and handle evacuations on the other side of the city. Coran, be ready to drop part of the barrier long enough to let refugees through. We can at least protect them in the Castle.”  
  
“Standing by,” Coran agrees.   
  
“Can’t he— — —ell but I think — — it. Evacu— — my side. Call me if—“   
  
Ryou curses under his breath. He’s not sure if the vines are interfering with communications, but at least Lance is doing what he can. It’s a start.  
  
They fall into a rhythm then. Ryou’s group breaks up into smaller teams and begins spreading out through the city, getting citizens moving and helping to transport the wounded. Ryou stays on the front lines, even as those lines creep steadily further into the city, doing what he can to rescue those caught by the attacking forest. His Olkari arm’s blasts are just enough to sever and shatter some of the smaller vines, letting him rescue trapped civilians. And he can still maintain a controlled leader-like persona while doing it, which means he can keep those people from panicking and get them moving to safety. It’s a far cry from what he might have been able to pull off in a Lion, but at least he’s doing what he can to keep casualties to a minimum.   
  
It’s ten doboshes into the evacuation that the rhythm breaks.   
  
Ryou is patrolling one of the streets on his own, now, and finds a civilian Olkari being tangled up in a mess of vines. She calls for help as the forest starts to swarm over her, but it’s the wrong angle for Ryou to get a decent shot. Her body disappears into the writhing mass of vines just as Ryou leaps forward and snags her hand with his left arm, pulling to try and free her.   
  
The vines don’t like that—they start to curl around his arms as well, to try and absorb him, too. But he powers up his Olkari arm and blasts them free with a snarl. When the vines retract and writhe as they try to repair their shattered, burning parts, Ryou takes the opportunity to reach in further and drag the victim free. She staggers out, gasping for breath, and he drags her down the street away from the attacking forest.  
  
“Thank you, paladin,” she gasps, clinging to him.  
  
“It’s fine,” Ryou says. “Go, hurry. There’s others posted along the way—they’ll direct you to the Castle of Lions. Run!”   
  
He shoves her in the correct direction, towards another open plaza just at the end of the street. She runs, wide-eyed and frightened but at least able to follow his instructions. Ryou makes sure she makes it out of the worst of the thicket, and then turns back to the street, searching for more survivors before it becomes completely overrun.  
  
He feels a tug on his right wrist, sharp and insistent. Startled, Ryou tries to jerk his hand away immediately, afraid that the vines have swarmed close enough to try and make a grab at him. But there’s no vines grappling for him, and his arm is sluggish and sticky, slow to respond.   
  
He frowns, but when he looks at his palm, he feels his heart drop into his stomach. His Olkari arm is active, and like always, its bright leaf-vein lines are reflected over the surface of his armor, from his fingertips to past his elbow. But where they’re normally a pale green, to match Olkari power sources, his fingertips are the same sickly purple that coats the aggressive forest. Even as he watches, the purple swarms up his arm, overlapping the pale green until every last bit of it is gone.  
  
His artificial fingers jerk spasmodically—but Ryou had never ordered them to. He watches with a numb sort of horror as his wrist and fingers twitch and flex to the very edge of their mobility, bending and straining to move further, all without his will.   
  
Too late, he realizes his mistake: whatever the Galra had done, it wasn’t attacking the forest. It was attacking Olkari technology and Olkari powers—and his arm was a part of that. He’d been fighting at range this whole time, but the moment those vines touched his _Olkari_ arm, whatever was affecting them must have been transmitted.  
  
The involuntary movement travels up his arm now, as the entire prosthetic starts to come alive with a will of its own, twitching and jerking and struggling to coordinate itself. Ryou can feel his own dread threatening to paralyze him—this was a nightmare of his and Shiro’s _both_ , that their artificial arms might seize control from them, and force them to do awful things against their will. But that fear had gone away when Ryou had lost his Galra arm, and replaced it with an Olkari one. Ryner’s people would never forcibly take will away from those they’d tried to help. It was an unwarranted fear.  
  
It was one he hadn’t bothered to ever prepare for.  
  
But as his arm twitches again, wrist snapping back so far it should be painful, Ryou realizes that his mind _is_ still his own. He can feel the prosthetic’s artificial nerves straining inside the actual remains of his arm, struggling to transmit control to the rest of the host. But Ryou’s human brain isn’t fully compatible with Olkari technology, and whatever the Galra have done won’t work on his biological body.   
  
That’s enough to give him resolve. This is still a nightmare come to life, and his breathing is still growing harsh and panting with fear. But at least he has some control, and it’s enough to force down his very real terror and let him act.  
  
He grabs his artificial wrist with his left hand as it twitches again, and forces it down to his side. Whatever it’s trying to do, he can’t let it finish. But his Olkari arm resists, forcing itself upward and outward again, and Ryou curses. Although his prosthetic doesn’t have the brute, mechanical strength of Shiro’s, it _is_ still stronger than an average human arm, and he’s not strong enough to fight it with his left.   
  
But there are other ways. If he can’t fight it, he’ll remove it. _His_ prosthetic is designed to be removable, if needed, unlike Shiro’s. And while he doesn’t relish the thought of being down both an arm and a weapon in the middle of what is now an active war zone, it’s still infinitely preferable to anything that prosthetic could do to him. He reaches for the catch just at the point where his flesh meets the bio-mechanical metal—if he can just touch it and concentrate for the five ticks needed, he can command it to disengage.   
  
But the prosthetic jerks away when he tries to reach for it, and Ryou swears again, frustrated now. The vines are coming closer, creeping up the street towards him, and the prosthetic starts to strain for them, and he doesn’t have _time_ for this.   
  
He drags himself backwards, against the reach of the arm struggling against his will, and staggers to a nearby building. Once he’s close enough, he turns and slams his right side—and arm—against the wall, hoping to pin it. In a contest of brute strength, he can’t arm-wrestle his prosthetic into submission—but he has more mass to put behind his attacks, and he only needs a few ticks.   
  
It hurts like hell. Even if the remains of his right arm are now much better maintained, thanks to Ryner’s work, what’s left of his right arm is still enormously sensitive, and beating it against a wall is a recipe for pain. But it also works—for a moment. The Olkari arm seems stunned, and freezes for just a tick or two, enough for Ryou to reach around and try to feel for the catch again. Just a few ticks more, and—  
  
He _screams._   
  
White hot agony burns into his brain all at once, and it’s suddenly as though his right arm is on fire, from fingertips to bicep. On fire, and all his bones are breaking, and he’s bleeding out, and every other painful thing he could ever imagine, all at once. He screams, and throws his head back, and his vision blacks out from the agony. He staggers backwards, and trips over one of the writhing, crawling vines, and collapses to the Olkari streets. And even then, when he hits the ground, he still screams.   
  
It hurts. It hurts so _bad._ It’s never hurt this bad, not even when an angry bouldernoose had been gnawing on his arm. Ryner’s prosthetic transmits pain, but only when the prosthetic itself is actively being damaged; it comes hand in hand with having nerves that feel textures and temperatures. But none of that is happening. Why is he _hurting_ this badly?  
  
He gasps, as his breath finally runs out from the screaming. He wrenches his eyes open, blinking spots out of his eyes to try to see, to try to understand. And then he does—and he almost wishes he didn’t.   
  
His metal arm doesn’t look like an arm anymore. His elbow is snapped backwards unnaturally, and his forearm curls grotesquely in on itself, broken in at least three places. The metal warps and splits, and little metal tendrils being to grow out of them, like tiny bio-mechanical vines and branches. As he watches, two of his metal fingers wrap together and forcibly meld into one, snapping and jerking into a newly formed metallic branch, and when they do, it feels as though his fingers are breaking and melting all at once. The entire terrifying mockery of what _had_ been his arm extends towards the thicket of unnatural vines in the street, straining to reach, still against his will.  
  
Revulsion and horror hit him at the same time, washing over his agony, churning in his stomach uncomfortably. He retches before he can stop himself, vomiting onto the street. To have this…this unnatural, grotesque _thing_ attached to him is terrifying; this is a whole new kind of frightening neither he nor Shiro had ever conceived. His heart his thudding frantically now, and every time that mockery of a prosthetic moves, it sends bolts of agony through him. A human arm, even an artificial one, was never made to move or look like this, and his human brain doesn’t know how to interpret it as anything other than pain. He squeezes his eyes shut against it, struggling to force back the suffering and the awful fear.  
  
The sensations are so overwhelming, it takes him a second to realize he’s moving.  
  
He drags his eyes open, and finds his mutated, purple-veined arm stretched out before him. Like the unnatural forest overwhelming the street even now, his arm still acts with a life of its own, slithering and dragging itself ever closer to the deep thicket that’s formed in the Olkari street. It’s strong enough that it’s dragging Ryou inevitably with it. Very distantly, Ryou can feel its need to _integrate_ —to become part of a larger whole, to form something deadly. Whatever the Galra had done to the Olkari forest, they’d done it with the intention of forming a weapon.   
  
And he’s suddenly become a part of it.   
  
It’s not an _unknown_ fear. Ryou’s already dealt with the crisis of secretly being a Galra weapon, of being used to kill and destroy things he holds dear. He’d found a way to fight that, and while it will always be a part of his past, and an irrational fear in his weaker moments, it’s not something he’s ever expected to become a reality.  
  
He _never_ expected it to happen like _this._   
  
Frantic, he tries to pull back, tugging hard on his arm, but it resists. He struggles to control it, to force his own thoughts and commands on it instead of the Galra overrides, but it’s like he no longer has that limb anymore. Even if he did, he’d have no idea how to control this thing, with its many growing branches and vines, that no longer looks or acts in any way like a human arm.   
  
He tries again, but it _hurts._ The only thing left he can feel from it is pain, every time it warps itself further, or drags itself uncaringly over the ground. His whole mind is awash with agony; he can barely feel or think about anything else.   
  
But the thicket grows closer, and he _can’t_ go into it. If he does, he knows he won’t come out again, not alive. The arm drags him over the ground, and he struggles to pull his left arm around to reach for the release catch. But the angle is all wrong, now, and he can’t reach, and even trying to move a little is pure pain.   
  
When the first of the vines slide over his torso and legs, he knows he’s doomed. They slither around his body and clack against his helmet, and—  
  
—helmet. Comms. _The others._   
  
He feels stupid for not thinking of it sooner, but he hurts so bad it’s a wonder the thought came to him at all. He engages comms, and gasps with a voice hoarse from screaming, “Caught—help—someone, please— _Shiro_ —“  
  
But no one answers, and all that greets his ears is static.   
  
The vines slither around his torso now, squeezing as they drag him further into the thicket. His own twisted arm burrows into the dark forest, bio-mechanical vines integrating with real ones, and every movement sends blinding pain through him. He can feel the pulse of power from the forest now, as it absorbs more energy and more power, and grows stronger, and integrates. He whimpers when it drags him further in, and tries to integrate him, too.   
  
_Please,_ he begs in his mind, and no one else can hear him there, either. _Help me. Please help. Please._   
  
But his own mind is empty, and he can’t fight it further when the crushing vines bundle him into a cocoon and drag him into the dark. 


	2. Chapter 2

The fight against the monster isn’t going well.  
  
Shiro’s still not entirely clear on what it even is. The impact sight he’d scouted didn’t have the remnants of a Robeast coffin, just a container that wasn’t large enough to hold this creature. It looks organic, and Ryner claims it’s like one of their tree mechs. He can sort of see the similarity, even if this one has a mouth full of massive teeth and acts like it’s alive.   
  
He’s not sure what it is or where it came from, but he knows it’s no coincidence. The Galra had done this, somehow. Now they just have to survive long enough to stop it.   
  
Holding out against it attacks solo had been difficult. It kept trying to make for the city. Shiro had forced it to remain in place by holding its attention—he doesn’t want to think about what that thing could do to the city if it got there—but doing so had nearly cost him his life.  
  
The arrival of the others had made things only slightly easier. It’s not as hard to distract the beast, with five Lions to hold its attention—but it’s deadly, and just one blast from that cannon mounted on its back might be enough to put a Lion out of commission.   
  
And for all their work, they’re only making a little bit of difference. From Ryou’s report, the city is still being attacked and torn apart—just not by a monster. All their efforts could be for nothing. By the time they beat it, Olkarion still could have fallen.  
  
But he can’t let himself think like that. Shiro trusts Ryou to handle the city defenses until they can take this creature down. For now, Voltron is the only thing that can defeat it, which means it _has_ to be their primary goal. And until Matt can analyze the data and find out what’s driving this thing, Voltron has to stall.  
  
They form Voltron. And that’s when things get really difficult.  
  
“It’s not _working!”_ Keith hisses in frustration. “Every time we cut it, it just reforms!”   
  
Voltron slices another gash deep into the creature’s armored shoulder with the blazing sword. There’s a sharp crack, like a tree struck by lightning, and a sizable chunk of its armor falls away as Voltron flies past. But even as they watch, dozens of purple-glowing vines swarm over the gash and knot together, reforming the creature’s outer shell.  
  
“It’s just like those cubes last time,” Hunk says, frantic. “I don’t think cutting it’s gonna work!”   
  
And shooting won’t be an option, either. With that thing firing at them constantly with its cannon, they can’t pause long enough to lock on with Hunk’s shoulder-cannon.   
  
“We’ll go for another pass,” Shiro decides. “Keith, try to disable the cannon. When it’s reforming, we switch to Hunk’s shoulder cannon and blast it.”   
  
He can feel their acknowledgement as he adjusts the controls to turn Voltron around. But then Voltron jerks suddenly, and Allura yelps, “I’m caught by something!”  
  
The monster is still a hundred feet away, and not even facing them. But Shiro feels the tug on Voltron again, and a moment later Hunk moans, “Oh, no—me too! I can’t move my leg—my _Voltron_ leg, I mean.”   
  
“The vines!” Pidge yells. “I can see them from here—they reached up and grabbed us—“  
  
“We’re being pulled down!” Allura yells, frantic.   
  
“Keith, cut them away!” Shiro barks, but Keith’s already moving. He manages to slice away the vines directly below the Red Lion, wrapping Allura—but they grow tightly around the Yellow Lion, and start to drag them down further. Pidge fires frantically with the Green Lion, and Keith strikes for them next, but more vines snap up like whips to wrap around Voltron’s arms, restraining them.   
  
_“No!”_ Keith yells. “I can’t move—Red’s locked up!”  
  
“Green, too!” Pidge adds.   
  
“The Blue Lion is being restricted again,” Allura reports. “We’re still being pulled down!”   
  
“Fire all thrusters at full!” Shiro orders. He does so himself, pushing Voltron’s wing jets to maximum capacity. But although he feels Voltron resist for a moment, and the metal creaks and groans around him as it struggles, they’re inevitably dragged down further. The sensors in the cabin start blaring loudly, and the readouts indicate the vines are crawling up around Voltron’s chest, curling over the wings, sliding around its head.   
  
“I can’t,” Hunk yells. “It’s not working—“  
  
“Separate into Lions!” Allura suggests, frantic.  
  
“Too late,” Shiro says. “We’re trapped—“  
  
And, as if in answer to his words, the last of the Black Lion’s visual sensors go black, and he’s left in almost complete darkness.   
  
There’s a long, frightening silence for just a moment, and Shiro struggles to reorient in the dark. The slight purple glow in the cabin from his pilot’s chair and a few of the main systems is eerily similar to the prison cells with the Galra, but he forces that back. He can still feel the presence of the Black Lion in his head, and that’s enough to remind him where and when he is, and that he’s still on a mission.   
  
“What do we do?” Hunk asks, frightened.   
  
“What is that noise?” Pidge asks next. “That…that rumbling?”  
  
“It’s the monster,” Shiro says, recognizing it. “Heading in the opposite direction—towards the city.” Damn it. This is what he’d been trying to avoid. He opens the communications channels further. “Ryner! Ryou! Lance! You’ve got a monster incoming. We’re trying to get free but you need to train any defense systems on it _now.”_  
  
“Our defenses aren’t finished!” Ryner says. “We can’t fire. The mechanism isn’t ready—and the vines have already destroyed many of our systems.”  
  
That’s one option lost, then. The creature’s going to get to the city one way or another. Voltron has to find a way to get free, but until then… “Ryou, it’s going to strike from the northeast—is that part of the city clear?”  
  
No answer.   
  
“Ryou?”   
  
Silence. That sends an uncomfortable twist of worry through his stomach, but Shiro fights it back. Silence doesn’t mean anything. He could just be fighting.  
  
As in answer to his thoughts, Lance speaks up, but his voice is static-filled and breaks up constantly. “—nnection bad, these vi— —ard to —icate. Ryou was work— — —ctor though, I think — clear.”   
  
Shiro hopes that means what he thinks it means. “Okay, keep getting people out of there Lance. Coran—get the Castle of Lions ready. If Ryner’s defenses are destroyed, we’re going to need the Castle for backup.”   
  
“Right away.”  
  
“Shiro, what do we _do?”_ Hunk asks. “I can’t move. Yellow’s quiet.”   
  
“Whatever’s affecting the forest is affecting Voltron too, on some level,” Pidge says. “Coran, has my brother figured out what’s up with that plasma?”  
  
There’s a crackle on the line, and Matt’s voice enters the conversation. The signal is weak—he’s galaxies away, but he’s still trying to help. “Only just got the signal and the data from Coran,” he says. “I’m looking now. So far all I’ve got is it’s some kind of virus. Since it’s capable of interfacing with organic matter, it has some sort of biological element, but if it’s affecting Voltron too—“  
  
“—then there’s a digital component as well,” Pidge finishes. “That’s something to go on.”  
  
“Thanks, Matt,” Shiro says. “Keep at it. See if you can help Ryner figure out a way to fight back.”   
  
“You got it.”  
  
“Shiro,” Coran says suddenly, “You need to get out of there, _now._ A Galra cruiser has just entered Olkarion airspace and—“  
  
The connection drops suddenly, fizzling out in a burst of static. Suddenly, even though Shiro’s connected to four other minds, he feels strangely alone.   
  
“Coran?” Allura calls. “Coran! Can you hear us?”  
  
“No use,” Pidge says. “I think Lance said the vines interrupted communications, and—“  
  
The entirety of Voltron shudders suddenly as it starts to move again. Shiro pulls at the controls, but the Black Lion continues to be unresponsive.   
  
“I think we’re under attack,” Keith says. He sounds grim.   
  
Shiro curses inwardly. _Come on,_ he begs the Black Lion. _We need to move. We need to fight. People are in danger!_  
  
 _I know,_ the Black Lion says. Its voice sounds so far away. _But I am very tired._   
  
Shiro can’t help but blink at that. Tired? The Black Lion _feels_ sluggish too, like it’s sick. Is that why it’s not responding?   
  
_Yes,_ the Lion says drowsily. _I am sick. This makes me sick. I am tired._   
  
“There’s something wrong with the Lions,” Shiro says. “Black’s not responding right.”  
  
“The same with Blue,” Allura agrees. “She is…sluggish.”   
  
“Yellow, too,” Hunk chimes in.  
  
“Voltron’s being affected on a sub-molecular level,” Pidge says. “Whatever this virus is doing, it’s weakening the Lions. But if we can tap into the quantum energy that bonds us all to Voltron, maybe we can lend them our strength.”  
  
“The bayards!” Allura says. “They amplify a paladin’s life force. Surely it will give them enough strength to drive out this virus.”   
  
“We’ll try it,” Shiro says, summoning his bayard. They have nothing left to lose, and everything to gain. “On the count of three. One—two— _three!”_   
  
And he slams his bayard into the slot and turns it with a satisfactory click.   
  
Immediately, everything brightens. The darkness of the cabin shifts to pure white light, so bright Shiro squeezes his eyes shut so he’s not blinded. When he opens them again, he’s not in the cabin of the Black Lion anymore—he’s in a strange, expansive dark space full of stars, and an eternal eclipse in the sky.  
  
He’s been here, just once, when he fought Zarkon. He drops into a ready stance automatically, Galra hand lighting up and ready to strike, wondering if this is some kind of trick. But no attack comes, and after a moment he takes a step back into a more relaxed stance, and looks around.  
  
There’s a doorway, just ahead—a round portal like a wormhole, but made of swirling black and purple energy instead. It doesn’t feel ominous or dangerous—he feels drawn to it, and knows he has to step through in order to do what he came here to do.   
  
He takes a step forward, and—  
  
 _“Please.”_  
  
Shiro pauses in mid-step, and turns to look over his shoulder. It had sounded like someone else was there—the voice had the same echoing, ephemeral quality he remembers from his last visit. But when he looks, nobody is visible.  
  
“Hello?” he calls. “Is there someone else here?”  
  
 _“Help me. Please help.”_  
  
Shiro frowns. “Keith? Allura? Hunk? Pidge? Is that any of you?”   
  
But even as he calls them, he shakes his head. That doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t sound like any of them. It’s familiar, but it’s not them.   
  
_“Help me…please…”_  
  
“Hold on,” Shiro says. “I’m coming.” He still can’t see anyone—the voice comes from a place of pitch darkness in this strange spirit place—but he can feel the anguish and pain in it, and that drives him to act. He turns away from the portal, and heads for the darkness.   
  
_“Please…Shiro…”_  
  
Hearing his own name is a shock, and suddenly the voice— _his own voice, his own thoughts, but not his at all_ —makes sense. “Ryou?” he calls, suddenly worried. He can _feel_ the pain and terror in the words, here, and he starts to run for the dark. “Hang on! I’m coming—“   
  
_“Shiro!”_   
  
And that…that’s _not_ Ryou. From behind him, from the doorway, he can hear several voices calling him now. They’re familiar in a different way—he recognizes Keith, and Allura, and Hunk, and Pidge. All of them call him with increasing worry in their tones. He can hear it in the way they say his name. He isn’t there, and they’re scared for him.  
  
But he can’t _feel_ their agony like he can Ryou’s. And the difference is all too apparent when that other voice comes from the darkness again. _“Please…”_   
  
Shiro slides to a halt, torn. The doorway is where he has to go. But he can feel Ryou’s suffering, and he’s needed there, too.   
  
The calls behind him get louder, more frantic. He’s not sure how much time has passed in this strange plane of existence, but he knows time is running out in the real world, and Voltron is needed _now,_ for thousands of people.   
  
He clenches his jaw, torn inside. Then he yells into the darkness, “Ryou, hang on just a little longer. I’m coming. I swear I’m coming, in the real world—just hold on for me!”   
  
And he turns, and plunges into the dark portal.   
  
Almost immediately he can feel the power of the others, and of the Lions. He’s not sure what this strange place is, but he can _see_ energy flowing around them in a torrent, and feel it in his bones, in his very life essence. The others are there, each glowing the color of their Lions, and as Shiro steps in they wear identical relieved expressions. Power surges through all of them as Shiro finally completes the circuit of energy, and suddenly color blooms everywhere, and it’s too bright for Shiro to handle. He squeezes his eyes shut again.  
  
When he opens them, once more, he’s in the cabin of the Black Lion.  
  
“We did it!” Hunk crows excitedly.   
  
“I’m cutting our way out,” Keith says savagely, but Shiro can hear the grin in his words all the same.   
  
There’s hardly any need for it. Whatever they’d done, the energy they’d generated and given to Voltron is enough to slough off most of the vines clinging to them, and Keith barely needs to swing the blazing sword around to clear them. The others are yelling with excitement. Even the Black Lion feels animated once more in Shiro’s head, and all of the panels in the cabin are lighting up again as visuals come back online.  
  
Shiro can feel the excitement through the Voltron link, but he doesn’t share it. Whatever that place had been for the rest of them, it had been an alarming hint for him that something was very wrong. Even as he slams his controls forward to twist Voltron aside from a new vine attack, he yells, “Lance! Can you hear me?”  
  
“Sort o— —- -ou need?”  
  
“Find Ryou,” Shiro orders. “I think he’s in trouble.”  
  
“How — — know?”  
  
“I’ll explain later,” Shiro says. “Find him _now._ Team—we take out that cruiser and then we take down that monster. _Move!”_ The faster those threats are down, the faster he can find Ryou, himself.   
  
The cruiser is floating above them. It’s clear now that it had tried to drag them in with its tractor beam while they’d been trapped, and it had almost succeeded. But one on one against Voltron, a cruiser is helpless now; the team has come a long way since their first battle against Sendak’s.   
  
The ship fires its ion cannon, but Voltron dodges with ease. Hunk, Allura and Shiro work in unison to burn thrusters and close the distance, and Keith readies their sword. They slam into and through the ship, shredding its interior and splitting it in half. The pieces begin to burst and crumble as they rain down on the trampled forest, but Voltron is already leaving it behind, heading for the city.  
  
The creature has already made it a significant distance into the city, when Voltron finally arrives. Even as they watch, its strange organic cannon forms and aims at the nearest unfinished Olkari ion cannon. Coran is doing what he can to help fight the creature off, and the Castle of Lion’s particle barrier attacks hammer into the creature repeatedly. But all it seems to do is slow the monster down, not stop it.   
  
“We need to protect that ion cannon!” Pidge yells. “If the Olkari lose their defenses they’ll be sitting ducks for the Galra.”   
  
She’s not wrong. “Form shield,” Shiro orders. They do, wingplates sliding forward to latch onto the Green Lion, and they reach the defense tower just as the creature fires. The blast is powerful, but Voltron is strong enough to deflect it, and it disperses into the air around them.   
  
“Take it down!” Shiro orders.   
  
They don’t need any further encouragement. Voltron rockets down at full speed, shield and sword at the ready. The creature adjusts its aim to make them the next target, but before it can fire Keith and the Red Lion lash out, slicing clean through the weapon and severing it. Organic wood pulp and vine-like tendrils clatter and thud to the ground, and the purple glow of its weapons systems charging winks out.   
  
_“Yes!”_ Hunk yells excitedly. “We finally got it!”  
  
“Good,” Shiro says. _Almost, Ryou. Just hang on a little longer._ “Now switch to the—“   
  
The creature roars in Voltron’s face, and parts of its body suddenly extend towards them, wrapping around Voltron’s limbs. Shiro curses as he loses visuals, when thick tendrils wrap around Voltron’s head, and he can hear and feel the frantic yells of the others as well.  
  
“Pidge!” He yells. “What’s it doing?”  
  
“I think it’s assimilating Voltron!” she yells back.   
  
“Assimilating? What does that mean for us?” Hunk yelps.   
  
“That thing is _made_ from a whole conglomeration of data and parts,” Pidge says. “It’s trying to add us to it to make it stronger!”  
  
“That must be what this virus is intended to do,” Allura says. “Can _anyone_ get free?”  
  
But the chorus of negatives from everyone indicates they are well and truly stuck. Shiro digs his fingers into the Black Lion’s controls and tries to find some way, _any_ way, to force himself free, but he can’t. They’re dragged inexorably closer and there’s nothing they can—  
  
Voltron rocks as the familiar blast noise of the Castle of Lions rings through the air. Coran’s voice crackles over the comms a second later. “You look like you can use some help!”  
  
“Coran!” Hunk says. “You’re the best, has anyone ever told you that?”  
  
“I’m still stuck!” Pidge yells. “I can’t—“  
  
“I’m loose!” Keith shouts. “Just enough to—“  
  
Shiro can’t see what’s happening, but he trusts Keith enough to let him assume more control in the Voltron matrix. He can feel Voltron’s body twist and swing as the right arm extends, and suddenly he has visuals again, just in time to see the sword cutting away the tendrils lashing to Voltron. The creature is right in Voltron’s face, jaws open wide—but that proves to be its downfall as Keith twists the blazing sword around and rams it straight into the creature’s open mouth.   
  
It shrieks, just once. Then it glows brightly, and Shiro manages to squeeze his eyes shut to protect them just as it explodes. It’s power was incredible, but it’s a detriment now, as it vaporizes into thin air from its own explosion. When Shiro finally risks opening his eyes again, blinking against the after images, all that’s left is a shredded mess of trees and decayed plant-life where the massive creature had once stood.   
  
“We did it!” Allura says excitedly.   
  
“We’re not dead!” Hunk agrees.  
  
The others cheer as well, and Shiro can feel their relief and pride through the Voltron link. And they’d done well; he can’t deny that. The city is still in danger, but the main threat has been neutralized at least.  
  
“—ro! Shiro, can you— —“   
  
Lance’s voice over the comms is faint and broken by static, and Shiro only barely makes it out. But he responds immediately, with memories of that desperate, pain-filled voice back at the forefront. “Lance! Did you find Ryou?”  
  
“Thank — ——n’t think y———me. I fou— — -t it’s bad. Hur—“   
  
Shiro can’t make out the majority of it, but ‘bad’ is all he needs. His heart feels iced over, but he forces himself to remain calm for the others, at least as long as they’re in Voltron. “Disband,” he orders the team. “Pidge—where’s Lance at?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Pidge says, as Voltron splits into individual Lions once again. “He’s not on tracking. His signal’s being blocked by something.”   
  
“Ryou?”  
  
“The same. It’s like he disappeared.”   
  
_Please, don’t let that have happened,_ Shiro begs the universe. It’s already been too many doboshes since the mindscape, and Ryou’s voice had been struggling and agonized then. He doesn’t know how much time Ryou has left. They need to _hurry._   
  
But the universe answers a moment later. “Blue has a lock on Lance,” Allura says.  
  
“Red, too,” Keith agrees. “We can find him.”  
  
And if Lance was with Ryou… “Go. Lead the way. Hurry,” Shiro orders. They don’t hesitate, and both the Red and Blue Lions turn and soar off in a slightly Southwestern direction.   
  
The rest of the Lions follow. But the ability of the Red and Blue Lions to locate Lance is troublesome, when Black hadn’t mentioned anything at all. He turns his thoughts to the Black Lion. _Can you feel Ryou?_   
  
_No,_ the Black Lion answers. _Your shadow is always quieter. Now he is silent._   
  
Shiro puzzles over the Lion’s term—it’s not even really the word ‘shadow’ so much as it is a _feeling_ of something that mimics him but has less substance, or takes his shape but not his form, or an image of his own reflection. He gathers enough to understand the Lion means Ryou, but its answer is disheartening. Ryou’s connection to the Black Lion had always been weaker than his own, but he could still fly it, still sense it. If the Lion couldn’t feel him anymore…  
  
 _Don’t think about it,_ Shiro insists. _He’s not dead. Lance said he found him. He wouldn’t tell us to hurry if Ryou was dead. Just focus on getting there._   
  
They do, in record time. The Red Lion is faster than the Blue, and it settles down first in a wide plaza overrun with choking vines. The Red Lion’s jaws open wide and spew scorching heat rays over the vines in the plaza, blackening most of them to a crisp and leaving room for the rest of the Lions to touch down. Black crunches down in the middle, its great claws gouging deep slices into the twisted, dead plant life and the metal roads alike.   
  
“There he is!” Allura says. Shiro catches sight of Lance bolting out of one of the vine-choked streets, waving to the Lions with a borrowed Olkari blaster. He gestures frantically for them to follow, and that’s all the invitation Shiro needs. He leaps up from the pilot’s seat of the Black Lion even as the Lion independently opens its jaws for him, and hurls himself out with barely a pause, speeding himself on further with his jetpack. The others are directly behind him, but he barely heeds their presence.  
  
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Lance says frantically, as Shiro runs towards him. “Me and some Olkari soldiers have been trying to break in but the vines just keep _growing,_ no matter how many times we tear them away, we can’t reach him—“  
  
“Where?” Shiro asks, voice sharp.  
  
“That thing.” Lance points as they dive into the street he’d come from. Ahead is a massive thicket of twisting vines. Even as Shiro watches more of the corrupted vines extend from the deep, knotted mess to slither over the nearby buildings and burrow into the ground. Other vines curl and wrap around the thicket, making it ever denser and thicker. It pulses like a beating heart, and Shiro can already see the first stages of some sort of organic body growing, like another of the mech-creatures they’d just defeated.   
  
The virus is _growing._ Pidge said it assimilated things. It makes roots wherever it can, absorbs power and energy and anything organic or technological or both, and uses that to turn itself into a weapon. If it’s not stopped soon, this virus could turn the entire _planet_ into a mass of weapons for the Galra.  
  
And Ryou is somewhere in the heart of that thing.  
  
“He’s all tied up in it,” Lance says. “We tried to get him out, we almost did once, but it grows too fast. He couldn’t—Shiro, he couldn’t breathe last time we got to him, it was choking him, maybe he’s not—“  
  
Shiro wants to reassure him. He wants to say that it’s going to be okay; that Ryou is a survivor, and he’ll make it. That they’re going to save him.   
  
But all of Lance’s fears are his own, and he doesn’t have time to argue them. Not now. Not when he has family to save.  
  
So instead, he snarls, “Get out of the way!” as he charges directly at the growing thicket and its slowly generating plant creature.   
  
The Olkari trying to manipulate the vines away pause, looking over their shoulders in surprise. At the sight of Shiro charging directly towards them, and not slowing down for a second, they decide to heed his advice. They throw themselves out of the way, narrowly dodging slithering vines as the virus-controlled forest tries to strike.   
  
It’s enough for Shiro to move. And he is _not_ losing his family, not after how hard he’s fought to protect him already.  
  
He can hear the others behind him. Allura calls his name. Keith does too, and then starts shouting orders. The others are yelling frantically.  
  
Shiro ignores all of them. They can handle themselves right now. They know exactly what to do. Ryou doesn’t. Ryou needs him.  
  
He draws back his Galra hand, and his fingers crackle to life with a violent purple-white glow. Eyes narrowed, he charges, ramming his Galra hand deep into the corrupted plant life, and plunging into the very heart of the thicket. 


	3. Chapter 3

_Just hold on for me._   
  
Ryou hurts _everywhere._ Everything is pain and blackness; he can’t recognize anything else, not anymore. His arm sends waves of agony through him with every pulse of the thicket, down to his very core, his very quintessence, and he lives in dread of every artificial heartbeat. He can’t see anymore—vines wrapped around his helmet and visor long ago. He’s pinned tightly, unable to do so much as wiggle. His right arm wrenched to the side and integrated deeply with the growing heart and weak consciousness of the sleeping creature he’s being made a part of. His left arm and legs are twisted and stretched painfully spread-eagled to the sides, straining his muscles with every tick that passes.   
  
He can’t move. He can’t see. He can barely think. And now he can barely breathe. The vines wrapped around his chest crush, and his armor is weakening. He can feel another vine sliding over his throat. The crush of plant life is so close and cloying there’s no air to breathe, even if he could take it in.   
  
_Just hold on for me._   
  
He tried. But he’s not strong enough. He can’t.   
  
_I’m sorry,_ he thinks. Tries to say. Can’t. The vines have stolen the breath from his lungs and the words from his tongue. It’s already pitch black, but his eyes slide closed anyway. _I’m sorry, I can’t—_  
  
For just the barest second, he feels the faintest breath of cooler air on his face, where the vines haven’t bound him.   
  
He wonders if he’s going crazy. If this means he’s dying. But then he feels a sharp _thud,_ and the vines around him quiver, twisting and writhing in agitation. And then he smells something burning, and the cool breath of air returns, longer this time—and he hears the unmistakable sound of someone calling his name.   
  
_“Ryou!”_   
  
It’s just enough to make him stir. He still can’t breathe, still can’t speak, but the familiar name and the familiar voice make him struggle for both again, weakly. He forces his eyes open, and it’s still pitch black when he does, but he tries.   
  
“Shhh—“ He tries to call back, but he still has no air, and the vines wrapped around his chest squeeze the slurring attempt from him before he can form it into anything.   
  
But it doesn’t seem to matter. “Ryou!” the voice calls—louder this time, closer. “Hang on, hold on just a little longer, I’m coming—“  
  
 _I swear I’m coming. Just hold on for me._   
  
He hadn’t imagined that. It had been _real._   
  
The burning scent gets stronger, and Ryou can feel the distant consciousness of the creature and the virus becoming more and more agitated at this attacker. It tries to strike, but this attacker _bites_ and _burns_ and it doesn’t like that. Ryou’s right arm burrows further into the collective mass and it’s _agony;_ he tries to scream, but he doesn’t have the breath—  
  
And then something brushes against his throat and pulls, and suddenly he does have breath again, just a little. And the burning stench becomes revolting and offensive to his nose, and he can taste it on his tongue, but he can also feel something scraping at his chestpiece, and then the pressure there relents, too.  
  
“Come on, Ryou, breathe,” the voice says. “Come on, please, just breathe, I’m not losing you now—“   
  
It hurts—he’s so twisted out of alignment and pulled to his limit and he thinks a least a few of his ribs have been broken—but he manages to drag in a rattling, pain-filled breath. When he breathes out he can’t stop it from being an agonized whimper; breathing hurts, and moving hurts, and everything _hurts._   
  
But the voice is encouraging anyway. “That’s it,” it says. “That’s it, keep going, you’re doing great.” It’s still pitch black, but something touches at Ryou’s face. He tries to pull his head away, afraid, but the voice says, “That’s me, hold on, just—“ And then there’s a soft _click_ in his ear, and a moment later breathing is still painful but the air feels less stagnant and hot, and smells less.   
  
He breathes again. It still hurts, but the voice seems to want him to try.   
  
There’s a tug at his head again, and Ryou can hear something sizzling—and then suddenly he can _see._ It’s still dark and claustrophobic and hard to make out details in all the writhing shapes around him, but the night vision settings on the helmet help.   
  
It helps him make out Shiro in particular, right in front of him. Shiro is half buried in the twisted thicket; Ryou can’t see much of anything below his chestpiece, like he’s leaning through the brambles and branches to reach for Ryou. Even then, Ryou can barely make out the white of his armor, because the vines keep trying to curl around Shiro’s own chest and arms and head. He keeps slapping them aside, or slicing them off and ripping them free with his Galra hand, and every time he touches one the burning smell gets stronger. But they’re persistent, and numerous, and Shiro only has one hand to fight them. Worse, he has to keep pausing shaking them off of himself to reach for Ryou, to loosen the vines curling around his chest or head, and every time he does they gain a little more purchase on Shiro.   
  
That’s not right. That’s not _right._ These things will kill Shiro if he doesn’t fight them with everything he has. He can’t waste time on Ryou. It’s going to kill him. It’s going to kill them _both._ They can’t both die like this. They can’t both be weaponized. Absorbed. _Integrated._   
  
Shiro reaches for Ryou’s head again, to pull away a new vine that’s slipped persistently over his visor. Ryou tries to pull his head away—weakly, because it’s still agony to move, to breathe—and gasps, “No…”  
  
“Ryou—“  
  
“Run. _Now.”_ God, he doesn’t want to be left behind to die in this, this is a whole new and terrifying form of an old nightmare, but he wants even less for it to happen to _both_ of them. Speaking is agonizing, and his lungs struggle for enough breath for words, but he fights for each breath anyway. “Run…now… _please…”_   
  
“I’m not leaving you in here.” Shiro’s voice goes for calm, but Ryou can hear the grunt of pain at the end, and hear the strain in all of it. Somehow, he’s struggling.   
  
“Run,” he repeats. His voice comes out as a weak, pained whimper.  
  
Shiro doesn’t run. He reaches out, digging his fingers into the thick vines Ryou can feel against his back, and drags himself closer through the thicket. The vines resist, but Shiro fights against it, pulling himself closer. They go for his face—but his helmet is fully sealed, and they can’t manage to slither through the gaps at his neck, and he tears them away before they can wrap around his head completely and blind him. They try to wrap around his chest, but he flashes them with the jets in his armor, and the decaying plant-life falls away with a twitch.   
  
They try to immobilize him, too, binding his arms, trying to burrow underneath Shiro’s armor to get at the plating in his prothetic. They want to seize control the way they had for Ryou. But in a truly ironic twist, Shiro’s Galra arm is immune to this Galra attack, and it can’t be corrupted the way Ryou’s arm is. It doesn’t work, and the Galra arm shreds them to pieces and turns them into blackened, curling husks.   
  
And then suddenly Shiro is there, right in front of him, pressed almost painfully close in the claustrophobic cocoon of corrupted plant life. “Hang on,” he says, tearing one of the vines from his helmet, and a second from Ryou’s throat. “Just have to—“ A pause, and a curse as he cuts another vine off of his arm, “—cut you free.”   
  
And he does. It’s slow going—he has to pause constantly to cut away attacking vines struggling to wrap the two of them up—but he manages to cut Ryou’s legs free, and his other arm. They ache, and he’s lost feeling in those limbs, and it hurts even more when the stabbing sensation of pins and needles fills them. He struggles to support himself as Shiro works, but he feels wobbly and weak.   
  
But Shiro’s efforts are for nothing. When he finally manages to fight away the last of the vines and hooks an arm around Ryou’s chest to tug him free, Ryou’s right arm lights on fire and breaks and tears and burns and bleeds all over again, pulses and throbs with each artificial heartbeat of the consciousness growing behind him, and he screams. It’s a ragged, strangled noise, but enough that Shiro stops pulling instantly.   
  
“Can you shoot your way free?” Shiro says.   
  
“No,” Ryou whispers, sagging against Shiro. That tugs at his arm again, and the agonizing throb of each heartbeat gets stronger, and he gags in pain. “Inte…integrated…controlled…” He manages to fix Shiro with a pleading look in the gloom. “Can’t…get free…run. _Please._ ” _Please, don’t let me be the reason we both die. Not when there’s no chance._   
  
Shiro grits his teeth as he drags away another set of curling vines, and lurches forward in the tight confines of the cocoon. His Galra arm curls around Ryou’s back, pulling Shiro tight against him, and for one bewildering and yet relieved moment, Ryou thinks this is it. One last goodbye, one last embrace, before it’s too late for Shiro to escape. One last farewell before he acknowledges Ryou’s final request. He squeezes his eyes shut, accepting. He doesn’t want to die like this, but at least it won’t be both of them.  
  
But Shiro doesn’t let go. The vines tug at them, trying to pull them apart, but Shiro’s grip is quite literally iron, digging so hard into Ryou’s jetpack he thinks it might have broken, and he refuses to let them be separated. He pulls uncomfortably close, helmet pressing awkwardly into the crook of Ryou’s neck and pushing his head painfully sideways. The vines curl around them now instead; Ryou can feel them sliding up his legs again, curling over his hips and arm, and see them wrapping around Shiro, too, but he’s so _still_ , and still he doesn’t run.   
  
What is he doing? He’s going to lose his chance to escape! Ryou's arms are both pinned again, but he presses his head against Shiro’s, trying to push him away, to encourage him to _run_ , not stay here like this—  
  
But then he feels the careful, searching touch on his upper right arm, on the undersuit. The touch is too cautious to be the vines and too deliberate to be flailing. Belatedly, he realizes this isn’t an embrace at all. Shiro’s hanging on to stay as close as possible, while he carefully feels down the length of Ryou’s arm, worming his fingers beneath the white paladin armor by feel and—  
  
—and resting on the release catch for Ryou’s prosthetic.  
  
Ryou’s breath catches in his throat, painfully, as it strains his ribs, but Shiro almost has it, and—  
  
The prosthetic releases suddenly. It’s abrupt, and feels like he’s tearing a bone out of his own flesh and blood, and his brain lights up in agony all over again. He screams, choked and ragged, but even as he sags forward in pain Shiro catches him and hauls him back. There’s a sharp tearing noise of the paladin undersuit as it shreds, and Ryou feels the tug of it against his right side, but then it’s gone, and so is his arm.   
  
“Hang on, hang on, almost,” Shiro says, and now he’s not staying still at all anymore. Now he’s a blur of motion, fighting wildly for both his and Ryou’s escape. He switches hands, this time wrapping his left around Ryou’s back to support him, while his Galra arm slashes out and cuts away the vines that had already been growing over them. Ryou is nearly blinded by the flash of violet-white over and over in his vision, brilliant after the dark confines of this organic prison. But it works. The vines start to fall away.  
  
And when they start to reach persistently for the two of them once again, Shiro raises his voice, and yells, “Now, now, _now!”_  
  
Shiro drags him backwards, with his left arm still wrapped tightly around Ryou. But suddenly they’re moving much faster, so fast it makes Ryou dizzy. The vines try to grab hold of them—Ryou can feel them latching around his arms and legs and trying to pull backwards—but something tugs at them powerfully from the other direction. Some of the vines snap free. Others are dragged out, out still further—out into _sunlight._   
  
It’s so bright it hurts, and Ryou squeezes his eyes shut, flailing out wildly with his left hand to snag onto Shiro’s shoulder and hold on as tightly as he can. Shiro pulls him even closer, and says, “It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re almost out,” even as he cuts out again with his Galra arm. Ryou can hear the hum of it as it swings, and the sizzle as another vine is severed. It’s almost comforting.   
  
And then he hears new sounds—shouting, and the sounds of weapons. He cracks his eyes open again, squinting, and barely makes out Keith, savagely attacking the vines reaching for them and still clinging to them with both the red bayard and his own Marmora blade. On the other side, Pidge strikes just as viciously with her own bayard, neatly severing the clinging appendages.   
  
“Pull!” he hears Allura order. He’s still slumped wearily against Shiro, barely able to stay on wobbling feet under their attack, but he can just barely see over Shiro’s shoulder. Allura is farther back, with her blue whip bayard in her hands, and Lance and Hunk each have a part of it in their own fists. All of them tug, and Shiro and Ryou are hauled back farther from the clinging thicket, and Ryou realizes that the end of the whip is wrapped around Shiro’s waist like a lifeline.   
  
_They all…they all had a plan,_ he realizes distantly.  _They wouldn’t have…I wouldn’t have…_  
  
There’s one last tug, and one last wild swing from Keith’s red bayard, and suddenly the last reaching grip of the thicket releases. Shiro collapses back as the tension snaps, falling to the ground, and Ryou thuds wearily on top of him, half sprawled on his side.   
  
He lays there in a daze. He’s distantly aware of so much shouting and movement, and he’s vaguely aware that the danger isn’t passed. They’ve only escaped, the thicket hasn’t been defeated.   
  
But it’s hard to focus on that when he feels so shaken. He still hurts, everywhere. Even with his arm gone, he can still feel the agonizing throb of each growing heartbeat through his whole body, or at least the memory of it. Breathing hurts with his ribs like they are, and his remaining arm and legs still feel like they’re being stabbed with hundreds of tiny knives as his circulation returns. He thinks at least one leg might be broken, or at least badly damaged.  
  
But more painful than even that is the thought that he’d nearly been absorbed into some weapon. That he’d had no _control,_ even when he _did_ still have his mind. He’d been helpless to stop himself from becoming part of something that would have killed his friends and innocent people. He’d been helpless to protect himself at all. He’d nearly…he’d almost…  
  
“—ou! Ryou, can you stand?”  
  
Shiro, Ryou realizes. He’s still collapsed on top of him. They’re still in danger. There’s still a battle. He can’t fall apart now.   
  
He nods, struggling to pull himself back together, and pull himself up. But his legs protest _strenuously,_ and he wobbles just getting to his hand and knees. Someone must notice, because he feels hands hook under his arm and around his waist, and they help haul him to his feet.  
  
He realizes it’s Lance when he tunes in enough to realize he’s rambling. “—ad your okay, we were really worried, we were trying to reach you but we couldn’t,” Lance says, anxious. “Woah, careful there,” he adds a moment later, when Ryou wobbles again as he tries to stand on his own. He keeps his grip firmly on Ryou’s wrist and waist, supporting him.  
  
Stupid. That’s stupid. He needs to pull himself together. He can’t look so shaken. He tries, but it’s so hard to focus and even harder to stand when he hurts so bad. He doesn’t think his leg is broken, but putting weight on it is still almost impossible. Movement and noise continue to pass him by as he focuses on breathing and trying to stay upright.  
  
“—ed to move, it’s still growing!”  
  
“Do we have a way to stop these yet?”  
  
“Matt figured out it’s some kind of replicating wetware virus, he thinks there might be a way to stop it—“  
  
“We need to hold these back until then with the Lions. We can’t let more of those monsters spawn.”   
  
“Get to the Lions—“  
  
“Ryou, we need to move.”  
  
“Is he listening?”   
  
“Ryou—“  
  
A curse. “Lance, give him to me. He’s injured—I’ll keep an eye on him. Get in the Red Lion. Keith, take Black, I need to step out.”  
  
“Uh—okay.”  
  
“Yes, sir!”   
  
Ryou wavers alarmingly as Lance ducks out from beneath his arm, but before he can fall Shiro is there, slipping his left arm over his shoulders. Shiro’s careful to loop his Galra arm around Ryou’s waist, and not his torso, mindful of his ribs. “I’ve got you,” Shiro says, softly, just to him. “Easy. I’ll do the work, just walk. Okay? I’ve got things.”  
  
Ryou feels like he’s stalled out, but that’s a simple enough order. He lets Shiro direct, and do most of the heavy lifting, and just focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. It hurts, but at least as he moves the stabbing feeling in his legs and arm starts to recede a little. Then he’s just left with his damaged ribs, his painful breaths, the throbbing remains of his right arm, his twisted right leg, and the frightening realization that he’d nearly become part of a weapon again.   
  
He’s not sure where they go; he’s not really paying attention. He trusts Shiro won’t lead him astray, wherever it is. The noises around them get quieter, and his feet don’t stumble on vines and broken metal streets, eventually replaced with the soft _clack_ of some other metal beneath his boots. There’s a slope, at one point, but Shiro does the brunt of the work, and Ryou just leans on him through most of it.  
  
But at last they stop moving, and for that, Ryou is grateful. Moving is a struggle, right now, and he’s so damn tired and he hurts so damned much.  
  
“Alright, easy. Let’s set you down here.” Shiro helps him sit, and Ryou leans back wearily against some kind of metal wall. Shiro sits down next to him a moment later, and slides an arm around him comfortingly, still mindful of his ribs. “It’s okay now. We’re safe. And there’s no one around, if you need a minute…”  
  
This time it _is_ an embrace, a real one, and that’s enough for the dam to finally break. Ryou had struggled to hold himself together in front of others, and he knows he’d only half-assed it at best, but he doesn’t even have to bother here. It’s only Shiro, and he’d pulled him out of the dark when he thought he was going to die, literally dragged him out of that terrible nightmare, and—and—  
  
He shudders, and leans heavily against Shiro. It hurts, a little, but Shiro turns to take the pressure off of him so he doesn’t have to twist, and Ryou buries his face against Shiro’s shoulder. He doesn’t quite cry—neither he nor Shiro are driven to tears often—but he trembles and wraps his remaining hand around Shiro in a shaky hug, and lets himself be visibly frightened.   
  
“It _happened,”_ he whispers into Shiro’s armor. “We’ve both been scared of it happening, but I thought it was over when I—I didn’t think it would ever happen like that, but—oh god, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t _fight_ it, I could have killed someone—or made that thing stronger, or—I _couldn’t,_ I tried but I couldn’t—“  
  
“Shh,” Shiro soothes. He doesn’t tighten his arms around Ryou—that would hurt too much—but he does lean a little closer. “None of that was your fault, and it’s all over now. We got to you in time. Matt’s finding a way to stop that thing now. It’s all over.”  
  
Ryou shudders. It doesn’t _feel_ over. His arm still hurts, where the thing had connected to him, and he can still feel the painful pulse of its growing heartbeat. It’s all in his head, he knows, but it’s terrifying anyway, to know his control could still be stripped away so easily…  
  
“It’s safe,” Shiro repeats. “You’re safe. Everything’s okay. I promise.”   
  
It doesn’t feel that way, but he does trust Shiro. If Shiro says it’s safe, it is. So he lets himself be held, clings to Shiro, squeezes his eyes shut, and shakes. And Shiro lets him, and murmurs soothingly when he needs it, and at last he feels his shaking start to fade.   
  
It’s only when the last of his trembling finally subsides that he finds it in him to pull away. Shiro lets him, and Ryou sits back again against the wall. Even then, he doesn’t fully break contact, and leans wearily against Shiro’s right side, spent. Shiro doesn’t protest, and just sits back against the wall next to him, and resigns himself to being Ryou’s support.   
  
For the first time, Ryou really takes in their surroundings. “Where…?”  
  
“The Black Lion,” Shiro answers.   
  
For a moment Ryou panics—but this isn’t the cabin, and there’s no one else here. He recognizes the belly hatch of the Black Lion, now, but he has no idea why they’re down here.   
  
More importantly, he doesn’t know why _Shiro_ is down here. “Sorry,” he says, genuinely guilty. “I’m falling apart all over you and we’re in the middle of a mission—you need to lead—“  
  
“Relax,” Shiro interrupts him. “It’s taken care of. Keith’s flying the Black Lion, right now. That’s why we’re down here. I figured you could use the privacy, even if it’s Keith…and the cabin would be loud anyway with all the fighting. But the Lions are the safest place to be right now.”   
  
Now that he mentions it, Ryou _is_ sort of distantly aware of the feeling of movement. The flight of the Lions is so smooth it can be hard to tell without visuals sometimes, or without something actively trying to batter the Lions into submission. And the vines outside definitely can’t hold a candle to the Black Lion, or even batter through its particle barrier.   
  
But even so, he shudders.  
  
“It’s safe,” Shiro repeats, patiently. “And you can take all the time you need.”  
  
Ryou nods, but even so, he still feels guilty. “I still forced you to rearrange pilots in the middle of a mission,” he mutters. “It shouldn’t have come to that. They could still need you—“  
  
“Keith can handle this just fine,” Shiro says, with maddening calm. “He doesn’t need me right now. Neither does the rest of the team. Matt’s been helping Ryner figure out how to stop these things, and they know what to target in the meantime. _You_ do need me, so I’m here.”   
  
“Oh.” Ryou swallows. “Thanks, then. For coming for me.”   
  
“Always.”   
  
Ryou frowns. “How…how did you even know that I was…I mean. I tried to call for help, but the communications didn’t work. I don’t think anyone could hear me.”  
  
“I didn’t hear you over the channels,” Shiro says. “I heard you in…other ways, I think.”  
  
Ryou rolls his head on Shiro’s shoulder, enough to try and give him a confused look.   
  
“I think I heard you through Black,” Shiro admits. “We had to do some kind of…of Voltron mind merge during the fight. I had to, I don’t know, loan Black my life force, I guess. When I did, I blanked out and went back to that weird space plane I fought Zarkon in—do you remember that?”  
  
Ryou doesn’t, and shakes his head wearily.   
  
“Well, not important,” Shiro says. “When I was there, I heard you calling for help. So I sent Lance to find you, and then we pulled you out.”   
  
“That was _you,”_ Ryou realizes, eyes widening. “You told me to hold on.”  
  
“You heard me, too!” Shiro says. “Yeah, I did say that. Were you there? Did you see that plane?”  
  
“No.” Ryou shakes his head again. “Everything was just black. I was hurting. And I was…I didn’t want to die like that,” he whispers. “I don’t know why I called for help. I didn’t think anyone would hear me…”  
  
“Well, I did,” Shiro says, and there’s a fiercely protective note in the way he growls that, just a little. “So don’t give up on that. Black’s connected us twice already like this. If you need me, call for help. I don’t care how far away I am, I’ll come find you.”   
  
There’s something comforting about that—knowing maybe Shiro _could_ find him, no matter how far away he might get. Shiro’s overprotectiveness is frustrating most of the time, but now—he thinks about the pitch blackness, the claustrophobic, binding space, the stench of decay and the pulse of that virus’s heart, and he’s never been more thankful to have Shiro as viciously protective of him as he is.   
  
So after a moment he says, “Thanks. And…I don’t know if it’ll work the same in reverse…I didn’t see that place you went to and I can’t remember it. But try anyway. Maybe I can.”  
  
With his head flopped on Shiro’s shoulder he can’t actually see Shiro’s smile, but he can hear it in his voice. “Alright. Deal. Maybe we can test that trick later…see what the limits are, for both of us.”  
  
That doesn’t sound like a terrible plan, actually. Better to know what they can do with it now, than figure out later. But more important to Ryou, is what it implies. “So…there’ll be a later, then.”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“You’re not, ah…going to pull me from the team. At least, it doesn’t sound like it.” Ryou sits up a little straighter, enough to pick up his head, although he still leans against Shiro. “You’re not going to pull me for falling apart like that. Or getting hurt. Or being useless…not being able to handle it.” He hesitates. “Are you?”  
  
Shiro sighs. “As family, you don’t know how badly I _want_ to do just that. You scared the hell out of me, Ryou. I thought I was almost too late…”   
  
Ryou is still shaken by it himself, but not so much that he can’t hear the tiniest shake in Shiro’s voice when he speaks. He nudges Shiro gently with his left arm, mindful of the Galra prosthetic.   
  
Shiro sighs. “But I can’t make that decision as family. I did promise. I have to make it as your commanding officer. And as _that_ …no. I can’t pull you.”  
  
Ryou blinks.  
  
“You did a good job organizing the resistance,” Shiro says. “Based on the reports Ryner’s been updating us with, casualties have been minimal so far because of your efforts. The area the monster rampaged in had already been mostly cleared.”  
  
Something warm blooms in Ryou’s stomach, a little bit of pride, but then it goes cold again. “I almost died anyway. And I could have fueled that _thing_ …I could have been a part of it, helped it hurt people—”  
  
But Shiro shakes his head. “That didn’t happen, and even if it had, it’s not on your shoulders. It was my oversight, to send you in when we both know you had an Olkari prosthetic. You wouldn’t have been responsible for what that thing did, either. That would have been the Galra.” His arm slips around Ryou’s shoulders, still very carefully so as to not injure Ryou further. “I can’t fault you for any of that. It’s certainly not grounds to pull you from the team.”  
  
Ryou breathes a sigh of relief—as much as it hurts—and leans wearily against Shiro again, laying his head down once more.   
  
“You _are_ pulled until you recover, though,” Shiro adds, more sternly, in what is definitely his ‘I am the leader, don’t question me voice.’ And more softly, “Which is going to mean the pods. You definitely broke a few ribs, and probably some other bones too, the way you were walking.”  
  
“I hate those things,” Ryou mutters sullenly against Shiro’s shoulder. He’d disliked them when he’d been Shiro, but they _really_ unsettled him as himself. They’re useful, and he understands the necessity of them, but that doesn’t make him fear them any less.  
  
“I know,” Shiro says. “It shouldn’t take too long, though. You’ll be out before you know it.”  
  
“Hmm,” Ryou mutters.   
  
He’s exhausted, but he doesn’t want to fall asleep. He doubts he could anyway—he still hurts too much—but it’s the principle of it, too. They’re still in the middle of a mission, and he doesn’t know how much longer they—or more likely, Shiro—will be needed.   
  
Shiro seems to be thinking along the same lines. “Do you want to go up to the cabin?” he asks. “Keep track of what’s going on?”  
  
It would be easier to see things, and Keith wouldn’t ask questions. But the thought of trying to climb up in his current condition fills him with dread. ”No,” he says after a moment. “Just want to stay still. Hurts to move.”  
  
“Okay,” Shiro says. “That’s fine. I can monitor things from here. You just take it easy.”  
  
Ryou nods wearily in agreement.  
  
“And Ryou?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“I am _really_ glad that you’re okay.”  
  
He still feels weary, but even so, that makes him feel just a little bit warmer and safer anyway.  
  
In the end it takes another varga for the attack to really begin to die down. Matt had found a solution to the strange Galra virus—which took advantage of the way the Olkari interacted with nature, and over-rode their communications. But being on another planet entirely, he hadn’t been able to show the Olkari what he meant, and conveying it through words had been a challenge. It had taken a while to explain it to Ryner, with Pidge to translate, before they’d found a way to redirect the vines’ virus-given orders. In the meantime, the Lions had been forced to fly around the city, targeting the growing virus-creatures as they grew in their thickets before they could reach completion, and guarding the escape of refugees.   
  
But they’d done it, in the end. Ryner found the way to seize control, and the Olkari had been able to neutralize the attack. The half-formed monsters died in the cradles of the decayed forest, and the attacking vines withered, and Voltron had been recruited to help with the cleanup.  
  
Ryou isn’t involved in it. The moment the coast is clear, Shiro directs Keith to drop them off at the Castle. He helps Ryou to the pod chambers himself, and Coran is already waiting to get him settled inside it.   
  
“You’ll be fine,” Shiro promises. And like he does every time Ryou gets injured enough to require a pod, he adds, “I’ll be right here when you wake.”  
  
It’s a stupid thing to feel so reassured over—like he’s some kind of child scared of monsters under the bed. But Ryou appreciates it anyway, and slides into the healing slumber of his personalized pod with Shiro watching over him.


	4. Chapter 4

Shiro’s there when Ryou wakes, just like he always is. Ryou never says it, but Shiro knows he appreciates it.  
  
The others are there as well. Voltron had been needed for some initial cleanup on the outside, moving particularly large vines and the remains of partly-created monsters. But once the Olkari were able to get their destroyed systems back up and running, they and the refugees on the planet had gotten to work repairing their city and cleaning out the decaying forest with determined enthusiasm. Voltron hadn’t been needed then, and the entire team was exhausted, so Shiro had called them in for a break.  
  
But nobody wanted to rest or eat until Ryou was up and kicking. So they’d waited the remaining varga, until Ryou could stumble out of his pod.  
  
As always, the team defers to Shiro first, when Ryou gets out. Shiro’s fairly certain that none of them officially _know_ about Ryou’s deep-set fears of the pods, other than Coran, who he knows has respected Ryou’s privacy. But he’s pretty sure a number of them suspect, in their own ways. Matt, Pidge and Keith had all seen Ryou at his worst, when he was sick, and could probably put two and two together. And Lance might not know the exact reason, but although he’d _claimed_ he’d decorated Ryou’s pod for practical reasons—“How are we going to tell his special one apart from ours?”—he has a gut feeling Lance had chosen stickers of stars and bright, cheerful colors for a reason. Whatever the case, they know Ryou doesn’t like being overcrowded so soon after getting out of the pods, and they know he’s a lot more receptive to everyone else after he talks to Shiro, first.  
  
So Shiro steps forward as the pod hisses open and Ryou stumbles out of it, putting out a hand to catch Ryou under the left arm to steady him. “Hey. Welcome back.”  
  
Ryou’s only answer is a noncommittal grumble. Shiro is reminded himself, waking up for classes at the crack of dawn when he’d really prefer another hour or two of rest. The pods have that effect.  
  
“Feeling better?” he asks.  
  
Ryou tugs at his arm as he stands upright, and Shiro lets go. He tries an experimental stretch, and prods carefully at his side with his remaining hand, before nodding. “A lot better,” he admits. “Mostly,” he adds, staring at the empty space where his right arm should be.  
  
“We’ll have that fixed soon too,” Shiro promises. “I already talked to Ryner. It might take a quintent for them to sort out the most dangerous messes on Olkarion, but then she and her engineers promised to make you a new arm.”  
  
He doesn’t miss the way Ryou flinches at that, just slightly. That doesn’t really surprise him any. He doesn’t really understand the details fully, but he had seen the way Ryou’s arm had twisted and warped to resemble the decaying forest they’d been fighting, and the way it had burrowed into the organic mess that had been forming a monster with a life of its own. Ryou had said it had integrated. Shiro can’t get Pidge’s explanation about assimilating out of his head. Whatever had happened, it had been frightening, and Ryou hadn’t been able to control it, and Shiro doesn’t blame him in the least for being nervous about getting another prosthetic now.  
  
Ryou had said _we’ve both been scared of it happening,_ and he wasn’t wrong. Shiro doesn’t know how many times he’d woken up in a cold sweat, staring at his Galra arm like it might turn on him suddenly, after dreaming of it turning on his friends. He doesn’t know how many of those nightmares Ryou remembers, either, or experienced himself, but he knows it’s enough times to have a lasting impression.  
  
But it’s sad, too. Ryou had championed his Olkari prosthetic with such enthusiasm. He’d loved it. Shiro won’t ever forget the way his face had lit up with delight, the first time he’d actually _felt_ things with his right hand. For it to turn on him like that had to feel like nothing short of a betrayal. He hates to see Ryou so disappointed.  
  
“No rush,” he says, low enough that the others won’t hear. “It doesn’t have to be tomorrow. Or that arm, even. We can find others if you’d prefer. It’s up to you.”  
  
Ryou takes a deep breath in and out, closing his eyes once, and then another, and a third, timing them carefully. Shiro recognizes it as a meditative technique he also uses often, although ironically Ryou doesn’t get this one from him—at least not directly. He’d forgotten it, but Shiro had taught it to Keith ages ago, and Keith had taught it to Ryou.  
  
Wherever it comes from now, it works, and after a moment Ryou says, “Okay. I…I need to think about it. But I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
“Alright,” Shiro agrees. “If you want to talk about any of it, I’m here to listen.”  
  
“Okay. Thanks.”  
  
“You ready for the others?” Shiro asks, smiling a little. “They’ve been worried. You scared Lance half to death.”  
  
Ryou smiles weakly in return, and in answer to Shiro’ question, he looks over at the others. “Hey, guys. Thanks for waiting for me.”  
  
“Ryou!” Everyone surges forward, eager to greet him now that the waiting period is over. Shiro takes a step back and lets them have their moment.  
  
“Matt’s sorry he can’t be here,” Pidge says. “He said he hopes you feel better. He’s still stuck on Hatroxi.”  
  
Ryou winces. “Oh, geez. Hatroxi. Have I missed my diplomacy meeting?”  
  
“Not yet,” Allura says, stepping forward. She’s all dressed up in her fancy Altean gown, with her hair down from its usual bun. “Matt asked them to push the meeting back a few vargas. I will be attending in your place, since you should be resting. I’ll be leaving soon, actually, but I did want to see you before I left.” She smiles.  
  
Ryou smiles back, though weakly. “Sorry. I keep failing at this diplomacy thing.”  
  
“Not at all!” Allura says. “Your notes were most helpful. I feel quite prepared to invite them to join the coalition. But you will certainly do well with the next planet.”  
  
“Assuming I don’t accidentally almost kill myself again,” Ryou says. “Illness, almost getting eaten, and now attacking plants—or is that almost getting eaten by plants? Either way, I wonder what’s next. Probably getting shot, that should break it up a bit.”  
  
“Ryou!” several of them hiss, aghast. Keith crosses his arms in a huff.  
  
“Maybe tone it down a little,” Shiro says mildly, putting a hand on Ryou’s shoulder. Dark humor is a little harder to take, when someone is fresh out of the pod.  
  
“Sorry,” Ryou says, contrite.  
  
“You’re hungry, obviously,” Hunks says. “It’s easy to be grumpy on an empty stomach. C’mon, we can get you something to eat.”  
  
The team sweeps him away towards the kitchen, chattering with Ryou about the whole attack. Many ask what happened, and Ryou gives them a shorthand account as he sits down at the table and Hunk makes them all sandwiches. They explain what happened on their end while he eats his, swapping details and filling in pieces where others had forgotten. Ryou seems impressed by the strange mind-meld they’d done with Voltron as they describe it, and a quick glance in Shiro’s direction tells him that was where they’d heard each other.  
  
Then it’s Lance’s turn to share, as the only team member besides Ryou who had been on the ground. “You scared me a lot,” he says. “I had to follow a trail of a bunch of the Olkari and refugees you’d been working with, because you didn’t have a tracker that was showing any readings, and I couldn’t raise you on the comm. That was the vines, of course. I found a bunch of people that had _seen_ you, but nobody knew what happened to you, until I saw a bit of your armor glowing through some vines when it was adjusting. So I got some people to help me out, but those vines are _tough_ ,” he finishes. “It’s lucky Shiro’s arm sliced’em right up.”  
  
“My bayard didn’t have a problem with them,” Pidge points out. “Or Keith’s.”  
  
“You guys have blades!” Lance protests. “I’ve got a sniper rifle, and I didn’t even _have_ it then, ‘cause Keith had my bayard.”  
  
The banter gets louder as Hunk and Keith join in, and it gives Shiro enough time to surreptitiously check on Ryou. Ryou looks a little shaken at how easily he could have been missed. Without Shiro’s warning, Lance wouldn’t have known to even look for him, and he’d never have been found in time. He glances in Shiro’s direction, meeting his eyes. The _thank you_ is clear, even unspoken. Shiro nods in return.  
  
“Alright,” he finally cuts in, as the banter gets more heated. “I know all of you are exhausted, and Ryou is okay now. Finish eating and take some time to rest. We might be needed tomorrow to help with the cleanup efforts, so I want everyone ready to go.”  
  
They grumble, but they listen, polishing off their sandwiches and trickling off to bed. Ryou does too, after a little while, although Shiro has a feeling he won’t be sleeping soundly. There’s not much he can do about that, unless Ryou comes to him asking for help, so he just hopes things go well for his clone.  
  
Based on the lines under his eyes the next day, they don’t, but Ryou never says anything about it. Shiro doesn’t blame him—his own dreams had been awful, when he hadn’t gotten to Ryou in time. He doesn’t push, not unless Ryou wants to talk.  
  
The next four quintents are a whirlwind of activity. Ryner’s team doesn’t get the arm done in time—the cleanup is much more complicated than anticipated, with displaced civilians and refugees to care for, systems to restore, buildings to fix, and necessary supplies to regain, without even counting removing the dead plant-life from the city. There’s no time to devote to Ryou’s arm, but he doesn’t seem particularly anxious about it either. Shiro figures he’s grateful to have the extra time to process, while having the excuse of having to wait.  
  
But after four quintents, they finally get the call that Ryou’s replacement prosthetic has been prepared. Pidge assures that it’s a much better model, and that she and Matt—who had returned with Allura, two quintents after the attack—had helped to oversee its construction. But even so, Ryou seems subdued when he gets the news—which is why Shiro decides to go with him, when it’s installed.  
  
They head to a different lab, this time. The one Ryou had first gotten his prosthetic in had been at the border of the forest, and was currently so overrun with vines and branches it was impossible to use. Matt and Pidge have already gone ahead to help with setup, and Shiro and Ryou make the journey across to the lab alone. Which is good, since Ryou is still a bundle of nerves for all of it.  
  
“You really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Shiro reminds him.  
  
“No backing down now,” Ryou says, with an awkward shrug. “They’re expecting me. We made the appointment.”  
  
“That doesn’t matter,” Shiro says. “The point is you need to be comfortable with this, or it’s not any different than this thing.” He raises his own Galra hand and waves it once. “The others won’t give you a hard time if you back down, or want extra time. Or if you decide you don’t want to once we’re in there, just give me a signal, and I’ll come up with an excuse.”  
  
“It’s not just about saving face,” Ryou says. “Or being comfortable. It’s…look, I need to get back on the horse, right? You get in a car crash, you have to make yourself start driving again. What happened was…was not fun, but I can’t let it dictate what I do next.”  
  
“No, but it doesn’t have to be _this_ way, either,” Shiro says. “If you get in a car crash you might have to start driving again, but you can pick a different car model you feel safer in.”  
  
But Ryou shakes his head. “I _liked_ that arm,” he says slowly. Insistently. “I really did. It felt good. It was comfortable. It’s as close to a real arm as I’m ever going to get. And I liked having range. I don’t want to let the Galra ruin something that I liked, not when they’ve ruined everything else.” He swallows. “Even if it’s probably never going to leave my memories ever again.”  
  
Shiro can sympathize with that. “Okay,” he says slowly. “That’s fair. I understand that. Just…don’t push yourself if you’re not ready either, okay? It’s good that you’re not letting them control your actions—“ a blatantly direct defiance of _exactly_ what the arm had been trying to do, “—but don’t let your need to do that push you to do this if you’re not ready, either. You can still come back tomorrow, or a week from now.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ryou says. “And thanks. I appreciate it.”  
  
The new lab is comfortable, if a bit barren compared to the previous one. Pidge and Matt are already there with Ryner and half a dozen Olkari technicians, waiting in one of the back rooms. Ryou freezes when he enters and sees the new arm on the table, just for a second. It’s like a terrible parody of the first time he’d gotten his arm, only then he’d frozen from shock, not nerves.  
  
Shiro nudges him forward gently, but gives him a significant look. _Just give me the signal and we’re out._  
  
Ryou clearly gets the message, but he strides forward to meet the others, masking his nerves as he greets everyone.  
  
“We made a bunch of adjustments to it,” Pidge says, patting the arm on the table. “Matt and I helped Ryner. She patched up the control issue that let the Galra wetware virus take over to begin with, so that can’t happen. And Matt and I spent an extra quintent using the headpieces to deliberately try to hack it.” She grins. “No go, for us _or_ the Olkari.”  
  
“This thing should be solid,” Matt agrees. “Only you should be able control it, even taking into account invasive forces.”  
  
Ryou looks a little more at ease at that.  
  
“While we were at it,” Ryner adds, “We made some adjustments based on your feedback from the Rembeliss incident.” She places her hands on the prosthetic’s wrist. “This model should neutralize pain a little better. It will still feel it—that is unfortunately the trade off or the sensation of touch. But it should reduce the feedback to your brain, especially after an injury. We’ve also increased its ability to self-repair, so damaging injuries should reduce at least a little over time. But do be warned—that will drain its power, which will make your weaponry less effective.”  
  
“Duly noted,” Ryou says. “Sounds like you guys have really been doing your homework.”  
  
“The Galra caught us by surprise,” Ryner says. She’s usually a calm person, easy going, but now she wears the same furious expression she did when Shiro and the others had first revealed Lubos’s treachery. “I won’t let it happen again, for my people _or_ for you. You did quite a lot to ensure my people remained safe in that attack. I can do no less than to be sure I do the same for you.”  
  
Ryou blinks at her fierce response, but then nods. “Thanks.”  
  
“Ready to try it on?” Pidge asks, excited.  
  
Ryou takes a deep breath, but then nods. “Let’s do this.”  
  
Attaching it is a simple matter, even easier than the first time. The prosthetic had been shaped based off of Ryou’s feedback from before, and needs hardly any adjusting. It takes a moment for the artificial nerves to adjust the first time, but after that it’s firmly situated, just like before.  
  
“How’s it feel?” Pidge asks, eyes bright.  
  
“Smoother,” Ryou says, after a moment. The arm looks mostly identical to the last, but he moves it cautiously now, flexing fingers and wrist carefully. He doesn’t show any sign of alarm, so Shiro can only assume it’s doing as he directs. “A little bit more responsive.”  
  
“We updated some of the neural pathways, too,” Ryner says. “That is probably the reason.”  
  
“It’s nice,” Ryou says slowly. Shiro can see the wariness in him, just barely, and a brief glance at Matt shows he’s spotted it too, but the others seem oblivious. “It’ll be good in a fight. Or just for everyday things.”  
  
“That’s the idea,” Pidge says, grinning. “Always be optimizing.”  
  
Ryou smiles at her, just a little. “I appreciate it,” he says. “Although I’m not going to test the other updates right now. I’m sure it will come in handy in a fight, but…”  
  
“Hopefully you’ll never need it,” Shiro says.  
  
“Hopefully, but that’s not how life with Voltron works,” Ryou observes. He sighs a moment, and then glances at Ryner. “Does the weaponry work the same? Is it active?”  
  
“Identical, other than updating the power source to a more recent variant,” Ryner says. “And it has been activated.”  
  
“Okay. I won’t shoot indoors, but do you mind if I just try activating…?”  
  
“By all means.”  
  
Ryou breathes deep for a moment, and Shiro watches carefully. He’s not sure of the significance, but this seems big to Ryou, so he pays close attention.  
  
Like always, when activated, the strange Olkari shapes of control—a strange cross between the digital shapes of a microchip, and the natural lines of veins in a leaf—spread from Ryou’s fingertips up past his elbow. They glow pale green, just like they always do, although Ryou is clearly careful to keep any power from gathering in his hand.  
  
Shiro’s not sure what he’s looking for. But Ryou can’t keep the expression of relief from his face at the sight of the lines, and when he looks around at the team, he seems much calmer than before. “This is perfect,” he says. “You did a good job. Thanks.” The lines wink out all at once as he deactivates the arm, and flexes his fingers slowly.  
  
It’s only when Ryou glances in Shiro’s direction—or more specifically, at his hand—that Shiro can take a guess at what he’d been looking for. He thinks back to the controlled vines, and the way they’d been coated in toxic purple veins, and he thinks back to how Ryou’s arm had mimicked those things completely. _It was the right color this time,_ Shiro realizes. _Not Galra purple. It’s_ his _again._  
  
Well. If that made him more comfortable with it, than Shiro is happy for him.  
  
The Olkari do a few tests, just to make sure their new prosthetic is sitting properly on Ryou’s arm—push ups, pull ups, and a few other exercises to test the full movement of the artificial limb. They also show Ryou the new way to detach the limb, if necessary; they’ve made the catch more accessible in the event of an emergency, like they one he’d just lived through. It passes with flying colors on all counts. When they finally opt to leave, two vargas later, Ryou is noticeably in better spirits than when he’d first arrived.  
  
“You did a good job with this one,” he tells Matt and Pidge.  
  
“We wanted to make sure it was safe for you,” Matt says. “Ryner agreed. I’m glad it’s working out.”  
  
“Better than anticipated,” Ryou says, and he gives Shiro a significant look.  
  
Shiro understands it perfectly. Things aren’t all fixed, necessarily. He knows that’s not a nightmare that’s just going to go away for Ryou—or for himself, for that matter. But Ryou’s managed to pick himself up and keep on going, at least, with the help of friends and his own stubbornness.  
  
If he can do that, then Shiro will support him all the way. And protect him too, if it comes to it—the attack had scared him more than he’d tried to let on, and it’s not easy to let go again. He’ll always be there if Ryou needs him, but he owes it to him to let him try to keep moving forward on his own, too.  
  
Ryou can get there. He can rise above even this. He’s strong, and determined, and willing to face down the very thing he fears to take it back and make it his again. He can keep going.  
  
And Shiro will be there to help him every step of the way.  
  



End file.
